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BY ALBERT MUZQUIZ • Reprinted with permission from Heddels.com
hen I turned up in St. Joseph, THE FAILURES BEFORE THE SUCCESS
Missouri, a storm was just John B. Stetson was born in 1830 in Orange, New Jersey.
Wgearing up. The sky was dark, The youngest of several brothers, the oldest of whom inherited
and I was pelted with fat raindrops when I control of the father’s hatmaking business, John still managed to
ran from my car to the door of the “factory.” learn the basics of the hatmaking trade. But John was sickly;
I’d been ringing up the people at Stetson there was something wrong with his lungs and doctors didn’t
since the time I left Brooklyn, and I was give him much time to live.
determined to take a tour of the factory. So, John did what many young men of his era did, he went
Stetson isn’t just a hatmaker. Their hats West, health be damned. At that point, in the 1850s, the
have frequently been said to have “won the Western frontier wasn’t all that far West, it was in St. Joseph,
West” and every history of the cowboy hat Missouri, the town I visited on my quest to find out more about
really begins with them. What could be the legendary hat brand. The drier Missouri air began to heal
more American than Stetson? What brand young John’s lungs, but his improved health was perhaps all he
would be more important to visit on my had to brag about. His job as a bricklayer wasn’t a great fit and
cross-country road trip than the brand that a flood washed away the factory in which he worked.
clothed history’s greatest cowboys and even Unemployed, John struck out even further West, to try his hand
Indiana Jones? as a prospector in Colorado.
Imagine my surprise when I was informed John B. Stetson portrait Stetson’s westward trip cleared out his lungs but also emptied
the factory had moved away some 13 years ago his wallet. When he came back to the East, he only had $100 to
and I’d driven an hour out of my way for his name. But at least he had a new business idea.
nothing. The old Stetson factory in St. Joe is
now nothing but an outlet store. The huge BOSS OF THE PLAINS:
building has been subdivided into a couple
of smaller retail stores. Ms. Mary Ellis, who THE FIRST COWBOY HAT
has worked for Stetson for the majority John Stetson’s arduous experiences trying to prospect for
of her adult life, was kind gold may not have been a huge success, but he
enough to sit me down in noticed a gap in the market. His old hatmaking
front of an ancient VCR instincts kicked in when he saw how poorly
playing a video called How a outfitted Americans were who made the trek out
Stetson is Made. I gathered West. There was, as yet, not
some photocopied newspaper an agreed-upon Western
articles she thought would be relevant, hat. Most people came out
took some notes, and hit the road. with the hats that had
served them well in the
cities of the East – top hats,
bowlers, and derbies. But
with relatively narrow
brims, these hats couldn’t
quite stand up to life out in
the elements.
When settlers did have
wide-brimmed hats, they
were often made of wool,
An early Stetson “Boss of the Plains” hat from the
early 1900s. The Boss of the Plains was a lightweight which would droop when
all-weather hat designed in 1865 by John B. Stetson for the soaked and were hard to
demands of the American West. It was intended to be durable, waterproof repair and reshape. Stetson
and elegant. The term “Stetson” eventually became all-but-interchangeable knew that fur-felt hats
with what later became known as the cowboy hat due to later style designs would serve their purposes
The Stetson Outlet, via Stjoemo
based on how the rounded crown would deform from regular use. better and even made a
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